Indiegogo raises $40 million ahead of planned global expansion

Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo recently managed to raise $40 million in funding ahead of a planned global expansion. The funds will be used to make key hires and focus on mobile users, personalization and building trust according to co-founder Slava Rubin.

Rubin said that if the 80s were about desktops, the 90s were about commerce and the 00s were about social, then the next decade is going to be about crowdsourcing. And he may very well be correct as crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter have exploded in popularity over the past couple of years.

Indiegogo first hit the scene in 2008 and since that time, the site has hosted more than 190,000 campaigns across nearly 190 different countries. But a large portion of the site’s growth has taken place during the last two years as funds raised have grown by 1,000 percent.

At current, Indiegogo accepts contributions in five different currencies (the US dollar, Canadian dollar, euro, pound sterling and the Australian dollar) while the website supports four languages (English, French, German and Spanish). These are both areas that are expected to be expanded upon once the global rollout gets under way.

Most notably, Indiegogo was in the news for helping to raise $50,000 to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. What’s more, more than 40 companies that were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month had received funding from the site.